During my freshman year at the University of Washington I was accepted to UW Leaders (UWL), an entity within the Associated Students of UW (ASUW). I loved the community I built here so I continued my involvement and served as a mentor for freshman, sophomore, and transfer juniors the following two years. For my fourth and final year in UWL, I am serving as the Assistant Director. In this role, I am able to not only cultivate relationships with mentors and Leaders, but also work on improving the organization as a whole. UWL made a monumental impact on my Husky Experience and I am honored to be in a position to hopefully impact other students’ experiences in the same way. UW Leaders Headshots from 2015-2017
As Assistant Director, I have realized the impact I can have when I am working on something that I am passionate about and how fulfilled that work can make me feel. I have been heavily involved during my time at UW, but very few of my activities have connected to my core values of learning, community, resilience, and contribution all at once. While I have had to learn a lot of skills very quickly in order to be Assistant Director, knowing that I am creating a space for students to explore their own potential in a community of like-minded individuals makes all of the hurdles I have had to overcome worth it. I have realized the capacity I have to inspire large groups of people and grow an organization, which is part of what I want to do in the future as a proponent of health education programs in rural America.
The BIG tasks I accomplished in my experience as the Assistant Director are:
During the 2017 spring quarter, the Director and I had to select the twenty upperclassmen students that would serve as mentors in this program for the 2017-2018 school year. This is not an easy task as many of the applicants were my friends and people that I had worked with previously. There has also always been the precedence that if you had been a mentor before; you would automatically get to be a mentor again the following year. This was a precedence that we did not want to keep, which upset a lot of people. There were several people who were vocally mad about the decisions we made and who we selected but the Director and I had to trust our decisions. Ultimately, we chose some incredible people that are leaders in their field to serve as mentors. Five of the mentors had never been involved in UWL before, an all time high for the mentor staff. This is exciting because it means we are expanding the community we can represent and are bringing in new ideas to UWL.
The fall quarter is the time where the Director and I work with the mentors to develop the curriculum that will be presented in winter and spring quarter. It is also the only time we have to prepare the mentors for the challenges of mentoring underclassmen. Having been a mentor in the program before, I felt like there were some really big gaps in this preparation and that mentors were not being prepared, which is a disadvantage for both the mentors and the program. This year we worked with our SAO advisor to redesign the mentor curriculum. I personally advocated for mental health and alcohol abuse training, both of which were implemented and sparked some really interesting and productive dialogue on the mentor team.
Every year the Leader cohort and all the mentors go on a Winter Retreat the very first weekend of winter quarter. The site we traditionally do the overnight retreat at typically costs fifty dollars per person, which is a lot to ask of a student. This year, we decided to make a big change and switch locations from the traditional one to Camp Killoqua. We sought out alumni donations and worked with the camping staff to make this retreat affordable. It was not easy and we faced a lot of skepticism from UWL alumni who loved the old location. We also had to come up with an entirely new curriculum as we had a new space to work with. The challenges were worth it because this year the Winter Retreat was free for all attendees for the first time in twenty years .
2018 UW Leaders Cohort at the Winter Retreat
UW Leaders is currently very isolated from the rest of ASUW. Part of this is due to the fact that UWL programming is very separate from the rest of the programming that other ASUW entities do and most people don’t know what UWL actually does. This was a difficult environment to come into but we as a Director Team decided to change this and hopefully create a legacy of collaboration for future UWL Director Teams. We are currently working on working on co-programing with other ASUW entities, like SARVA and the JCC Diversity Commissions. These collaborations are going well and we now have multiple new events planned for spring quarter. We have also applied for increasing funding for next year so that these programs can continue.
In order to demonstrate the importance of being Assistant Director of UW Leaders, I have outlined the leadership competencies that I gained:
Reflection and Application – After being in the program for three years, I was well aware that there were some big issues regarding inclusivity and diversity in UW Leaders. I also knew that while I had an incredible time in the program as both a participant and a mentor, this was not true of everyone, especially some of my close friends. As Assistant Director, I had to really reflect on the experience I had and gather information from others in order to come up with the most important changes to implement. When it came to the application of these changes, I always kept in mind WHY I needed to make these changes and stayed true to these values, even if it meant I had to be gritty when it came to facing opposition to tradition. This taught me the importance of utilizing reflection, both my own and others, when deciding to make changes, especially controversial ones. It can be easy to just jump into a position, but taking the time to reflect on choices before putting them into practice can ensure that you actually believe in the changes you promote.
Goals- When I started in this position, the Director, Ali Cho, and I sat down and outlined our goals for this program for the 2017-2018 school year and beyond. These big goals are:
Increase the reach of UWL beyond just the forty-six students accepted into the 2018 cohort
Ensure that the mentors and leaders chosen to be a part of the program represent a wide array of perspectives, majors, passions, and backgrounds at UW
Create a community of leaders and mentors that is inclusive and empowering for all involved
Ensure that UW Leaders is accessible for any student who wishes to participate and upholds the ASUW goal to “enrich student life and develop future leaders”
Having clear goals before we started managing the budget and making any decisions about the program helped to keep Ali and I focused on the bigger picture. We always asked ourselves, does this decision help us to accomplish the big goals for the year? If we could not answer yes to this question, then we went back to the whiteboard to come up with a different solution. This is a skill I want to implement in all activities or jobs I undertake as it made navigating obstacles and making decisions that impact other people easier.
Organizational Behavior - As Assistant Director I was in charge of managing a large budget funded by tuition dollars, meaning that every dollar spent had to be justified. I also had to ensure that I was constantly keeping in mind the big expenses that were in the future to ensure that we always had enough funds in our budget. As the more analytical person on the Director Team, I took on the responsibility of keeping a spreadsheet up to date with current and future expense and ensured that my director was kept aware of our expenses. On top of this stressful task, I also had to manage all emails from participants regarding attendance at meetings, send the weekly meeting follow-up emails, meet quarterly with all forty-six leaders, and work with mentors as they planned their weekly workshops. After the first month of feeling overwhelmed, I learned to specifically schedule my time for each task and move on when I needed to switch, take notes in any meeting I had so I could keep track of things I needed to do, prioritize tasks instead of trying to them all the same week, and make several of my office hours “closed door” so that I had time to do work without distractions. These are skills that will aide me in professional school and all future jobs, but more importantly, will need to be continually developed. This experience has made me realize that even the most passionate and dedicated people need organizational structure in order to succeed!
Mentoring –While I have had multiple experiences to mentor Leaders, I have also had the opportunity to be mentored, especially during this year as the Assistant Director. My SAO advisor, Patrick Stiver, has been a huge mentor during this experience. During our weekly meetings, he challenges me to think critically about my decisions and if they are moving me towards the program’s goals. He has also helped me work through conflicts, both with other people and when I am struggling to make a decision. Working with Patrick as my mentor has taught me that no matter what stage in your career you are at, you can always continue to learn from those with more experience than you.
Preparing for the mentor/mentee reveal with Ali and my SAO Advisor Patrick
Collaboration – As a full time student and employee, I am fully aware that do not have the time to accomplish all the goals that I have set for this program. With that in mind, I have learned to heavily rely on the power of collaboration, which has allowed me to build-working relationships with incredible people and accomplish some big tasks. One of the collaborative projects I am most proud of is the UW Leaders website (http://uwleaders.asuw.org/). I worked with one of the mentors, Kyle Simpson, to rebuild the website to make it an effective tool for current and past Leaders. I had a lot of ideas but very little website building skills. I knew Kyle was an informatics student, so I approached him about working together. We spent about a month planning out the website together. I knew the type of information I wanted to portray and the audience I was hoping to reach with the site while Kyle knew what types of layouts and design would keep people engaged in the site and able to find information. Together we were able to create an incredible site that continues to evolve each day as the two of us work to add more material. I am extremely proud of what we created and recognize that if I had not reached out to collaborate with Kyle, I would have produced a website that is far below the quality of what we currently have.
Conflict Negotiation – One of the biggest challenges I had to learn to navigate was how to be in charge of people that were my friends. Many of the mentors that we hired were my friends and past mentors. When they were slacking off or being a distraction during the meeting, it was awkward to call them out or pull them aside to talk to them. I tried to avoid instigating any conflict with them; I was worried that it would make our interactions outside of meetings uncomfortable. Soon, Ali and I were dealing with people missing meetings and turning in important work late, which was making it hard to accomplish anything. By ignoring the conflict, I only served to make it worse. After a long talk with my SAO advisor, I realized that my friends wouldn’t respect me less for holding them accountable for the job they had signed up to do. To resolve the conflict, I decided to address the mentors and tell them how their lack of respect for the position they had committed to made me feel. Through open, honest communication, the mentors and I were able to outline expectations for one another and we were able to move past the conflict. This has been one of the most valuable skills I have gained. I feel more confident addressing conflict and understand that as much as I may not want conflict to occur, openly addressing it can often times be the best way to move forward.
Personal Values – UW Leaders has been one of the most important organizations during my college career. Through my involvement in the organization as a participant and eventually as a member of the Director team, I have been able to solidify my personal values of community, empowerment, and learning. UW Leaders was the first place where I found a community and support system, which continues to support me even now, four years later. I have been committed to staying involved in UW Leaders so that I can have a platform to empower others in the program and in the greater UW community. This value of empowerment has become a big component of my personal definition of leadership, which is to prioritize the growth of others. Lastly, UW Leaders has always been a place where I can facilitate the learning of others as well continue to learn myself. Even if I am familiar with the materials presented in the weekly workshops, my understanding of the topic is always deepened through conversations I have with others. The ability to actively continue my own understanding of leadership and the world has been extremely valuable to me these past four years and is something I want to continue to pursue.
The competencies and insights I have gained from this experience will be extremely impactful in my career as a rural physician. As a rural physician, I will be providing physical care as well as promoting and implementing health education programs for my community. The experience I have had as the Assistant Director of UW Leaders will be invaluable as I navigate working with large groups of volunteers, patients, and community officials. I will need to have clear goals, practice strong organizational skills, rely on collaboration, seek out mentorship, negotiate conflict, and keep my personal values in mind as I pioneer these health programs.